Monday, November 12, 2007

Five For Fridays: Mirror fight covers

This week's Five For Friday feature is something pretty unusual...I'm sure it's never been done before in ANY sort of "Best Of" feature that Wizard has published.

Five For Fridays: mirror mirror on the wall! Who's the greatest fighter of them all?

FIVE FOR FRIDAYS: MIRROR FIGHT COVERSRobin dukes it out with Damian on the cover of Robin #168 this week as we toss out five of our all-time favorite mirror fight covers

By Brian Warmoth

Posted November 9, 2007 1:10 PM

Nothing screams confusing suspense like a cover with two similarly clad heroes busting knuckles against one another. Evil doppelgangers make the best sparring partners, and nothing confuses the beginning of a story more than a fight between two identical costumes.

This week, fresh after meeting his dad Ra’s, who came back from the dead in Batman, Damian runs into Robin in Robin #168, and Adam Kubert sets up a classic tussle between the good and bad Batman protégés. Kubert knows how to pump some power into a cover fight, balancing knocking their heads against one another and giving it a little visual vertigo with their cute matching outfits.

Here, for Friday, are our top five favorite mirror fight covers of all time.

Star Trek #11 (1985)Tom Sutton

There’s no better place to start calling out mirror fight covers than this awesome Vulcan mindmeld gone awry. Spock and Mirrorverse Spock go at it as only a Vulcan and evil Vulcan can—by lashing out at one another’s brains. Anyone who knows Spock knows that he doesn’t anger easily, so seeing him go feral on his evil twin gives this cover more than enough nerd eye candy.

The Incredible Hulk #376 (1990)Dale Keown

The interlocking figures of the Grey Hulk and Green Hulk about to crush each other’s windpipes cemented this iconic cover’s place in Peter David’s Hulk run with Bruce Banner perfectly slotted in at the bottom. Keown’s thumb was right on the double-edged suspense that great mirror fight covers should have, making you feel like either of these guys could pop the other’s larynx at any second.

Amazing Spider-Man #149 (1975)Frank Giacoia

The issue that unchained Spider-Man’s infamous “Clone Saga” and introduced Spidey’s double to the world still kicks with as much web-smacking calamity as it did in 1975. The Jackal, one of the most brazen psychos in Spidey’s rogues gallery, made his mark in Amazing Spider-Man #149. The ambiguity of the cover spilled over into this story’s conclusion, which came back with a vengeance in the ’90s when the Scarlet Spider showed up.

Justice League of America #74 (1969)Neal Adams

No one knows how to make an impact quite like Neal Adams, and when Justice League of America #74 handed him the first meeting between Earth-1 Superman and Earth-2 Superman, he punched a hole through some concrete with this scene. You can almost feel Superman’s jaws of steel clacking together as his otherworldly counterpart hammers down on him from the sky like an anvil.

Wolverine #38 (1991)Marc Silvestri

What’s not to love about a raging robot Wolverine choking the slobber out of the grisliest mutant on the face of the Earth? The look in Wolverine’s eyes matched with the empty sockets in Albert’s face gave this grapple a total sense of chaos and set up a great confrontation, matched with an ominously classy title, “Death in Venice!” The ugly vertical reflection of one’s face against the other makes it downright terrifying, and easily earns it a spot in our top five mirror fight covers.

Surrender? SURRENDER?!

Me Comic Book Guy! Me smash...er...geek you out!

Comic book geek extraordinaire at your service! As my friends always take great pleasure in reminding me: I'm a pop culture geek and a child of the 80s with too much useless information in my head. Now kneel before Zod!